


Desolate Tracts Unknown

by SilenceIsGolden15



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo 2k18 [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Claustrophobia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Games gone wrong, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Prompt: Locked Up and Left Behind, Protective Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 07:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16058507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilenceIsGolden15/pseuds/SilenceIsGolden15
Summary: It was supposed to be a game.Until it wasn't.





	Desolate Tracts Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> Yes yes another video game reference title I know I'm a mess.

It was supposed to be a game.

Until it wasn’t.

Like most shenanigans in the Castle, it started with Lance, bored by the lack of missions in this quadrant of space. Shiro and Allura were locked away on the bridge, painstakingly going over location options and alliance options and possible battle strategy. Coran was somewhere in the depths of the Castle, still trying to work out the various problems ten thousand years of neglect could cause. Leaving the three other paladins at Lance’s hyperactive mercy.

“Come on,” he was currently pleading with Keith, “Please? Pretty please? It’ll be fun!”

Keith pinched the bridge of his nose. Hunk and Pidge had already given in, leaving him to fight Lance alone.

Traitors.

“I’m not playing Hide and Seek with you, Lance. We’re not eight years old.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “You can call it stealth training if you want, sour puss.”

Keith scowled. He wasn’t being a sour puss, he just didn’t want to play his stupid game, was that really so bad?

“Ohhhhhhh, there’s the face. I knew you were going to make that face.”

Keith growled this time. “What face?”

“The I’m-the-lone-wolf-I-never-have-fun face.”

“You aren’t going to give this up, are you?”

Lance’s face turned triumphant, and Keith kind of wanted to punch him.

“Nope. Resistance is futile.”

Keith groaned and dropped his head back against the couch, but Lance’s expression didn’t change. He’d already won and he knew it.

“Fine. Just shut up. God.”

Lance’s grin was infuriating.

* * *

“Ready or not, here I come!” Lance’s voice echoed down the hall from the dining room where they’d all started. Keith was three hallways away, tucked behind a pillar. Not the most imaginative hiding place, but whatever.

Lance kept talking as he searched, half muttered comments to himself and called out jokes, hoping one of them would laugh and give themselves away. Suddenly his voice was much louder, at the end of Keith’s hall, and his breath instinctively hitched. Carefully, Keith peered out from behind his pillar.

Lance was there, alone, back turned to Keith as he finished scouring a room at the bend of the hall.

Keith had sworn to himself that he wasn’t going to put too much effort into this game. But there was no way in hell he was going to be found first-- Lance would never let him live it down. So, quickly, before Lance could turn around and spot him, he darted across the hall to the door opposite his pillar. He didn’t look at what was in the room when he ducked inside. He just pressed against the wall and held his breath.

The door beeped, slid closed, and beeped again. Then he was blanketed in darkness, and Lance’s voice outside was muffled as he wandered by the room without looking inside.

Keith released his breath. Now all he had to do was sit until he heard Lance find Hunk and Pidge, and then he’d be done with this stupid game and he could go train in peace.

* * *

Half an hour later Lance had found Pidge (holed up in her Lion’s cockpit) and Hunk (crouched behind a counter in the kitchen), but he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Keith and it was pissing. Him. Off.

“You really should have expected this.” Pidge said smugly as she watched Lance storm around in search of his mullet-headed rival. “He probably is treating it like stealth training.”

“I am _not_ losing to Keith at my own game.” He replied with a pout.

“He’s not the most patient.” Hunk suggested. “Just wait until he gets twitchy and comes out, and then you can claim the game was still going.”

Pidge shook her head at him. “I’m starting to understand why Keith is always so irritated with you two.”

Hunk, Lance begrudgingly admitted, was right. Keith would come out eventually.

They just had to wait.

* * *

It had been awhile since he’d last heard Lance’s voice. Had he given up? Was it safe to emerge without being harassed?

He waited five more minutes just to be sure, then laid his hand on the touchpad that controlled the door.

It beeped once, and the door remained closed. Frowning, he tried again, only to get the same result.

Ten attempts later he finally gave up on the touchpad, admitting to himself that the door was probably stuck. He didn’t turn to look at the room behind him-- which he’d since discovered was a supply closet full of unfamiliar Altean items-- and instead drew his knife as he moved towards the seam of the door.

Bracing the point of his knife in the paper thin gap, he began to gradually increase the pressure on the hilt. It trembled, but the door didn’t budge, and eventually the blade slipped from the gap, letting out an unholy screech as it dragged over the surface of the metal. He only narrowly avoided getting slashed when it slipped, and he didn’t need another attempt to realize that the door wasn’t just jammed.

It was locked.

With a closed fist, he banged on the door. “Hello?” He shouted. “Lance? Are you out there?”

No answer. He gulped and pounded again in the same three strike pattern.

“Guys? Let me out!”

Again only silence reigned, and Keith let out a shaky breath, trying to ignore the tightening in his chest.

“Ok,” he whispered aloud to himself, “Ok. It’s fine. It just got locked behind me accidentally. It’s fine. The others will hear me and come get me out.”

For the next fifteen minutes he pounded on the door and shouted as loud as he could, making the small metal room ring with his voice. He didn’t stop until his knuckles were red and swelling under his gloves and his throat ached, but even then when he stopped to listen there was nothing but silence from the hallway beyond.

Stumbling back from the door, Keith tried his best to get his rapid breathing under control.

“It’s fine.” He said to himself again. “It’s fine.”

The team would notice. When he didn’t come out of hiding, the others would come looking for him. He just had to be patient and wait for them.

“Patience yields focus.”

With another deep breath, ignoring how it shuddered in his lungs, he took a seat on the cold metal floor. He carefully kept facing the door, not the foreboding, shadowy shelves behind him, and tried his best to wait.

* * *

It was hard to track the passage of time in the dark, but the growing ache in Keith’s knuckles and the ever-tightening ball of anxiety in his gut told him it had been awhile. Maybe even a few vargas. Surely the others must have noticed his absence by now.

_Maybe it’s a prank._

He swallowed hard and clenched his fists on his knees. Lance was known for his practical jokes, after all, and Keith was always one of his favorite targets. Maybe this was his way at getting back at Keith for being a killjoy.

His knees cracked in protest when he got back to his feet.

“Ok, Lance, you got me. Great prank.”

Silence.

This time he banged on the door again, ignoring the pain that radiated from his abused knuckles.

“Lance! This isn’t funny anymore!”

Nothing, and a sudden spike of anger had him kicking the door.

“Let me out you asshole! Lance! It’s not funny!”

He can’t help but spend a few minutes that way, pouring his desperation into the metal with frantic kicks and punches and increasingly hoarse shouts. It wasn’t until one of them came out as a sob that he made himself stop, forced himself away from the door.

Keith sank to his knees, breathing hard, his hold on his emotions slipping. The fear was pressing down on him more insistently, the anxiety crawling up his throat, and he had to physically put a hand over his mouth to avoid vomiting. The smell of his leather gloves was soothing, but not enough to make him ignore how suddenly dark and small the closet was.

_Don’t panic. Don’t panic._

The two trains of thought battled it out between each heave of his chest. One, the small part that had learned to trust, wanted to give the other paladins the benefit of the doubt. They were coming, they just hadn’t found him yet, all he had to do was wait.

The other part was louder, and getting more so as the dark closed in.

Maybe it wasn’t a prank. Maybe it was a punishment. Perhaps from Lance for always ruining his fun or showing him up. If he apologized, would Lance let him out?

“Lance?” He called, trying not to sound as close to tears as he was. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being a jerk-- please let me out. I’m really sorry.”

This time the silence felt mocking. Keith lost his last foothold and fell into the spiral.

He’d gotten it wrong, Lance was mad about something else, or Pidge, or Hunk. He had to figure out what it was and then maybe they’d believe he was sorry.

Was it what he’d said about Lance’s intelligence yesterday? Was it when he’d snapped at Pidge for trying to make him go to bed the night before that? Maybe it was from last week when he hadn’t finished dinner.

He went through each transgression in turn, as far back as he could remember, apologizing to the people he was positive were sitting outside and passing their judgement on him.

Keith had exhausted his ideas for what he’d done and his voice was raw, and still the door remained closed and the hall silent. Who else could he have made angry?

So he said sorry to Coran for zoning out during his stories. He said sorry to Allura for being Galra and for suggesting they leave her with Zarkon.

Still nothing, and he finally let himself cry, though he muffled the sound into his gloves. He didn’t want them to hear-- they might make him stay in there longer for being a cry baby.

The dark was all around him, almost slithering down his throat, and that was when the worst idea finally occurred to him.

Maybe the game had been a trap to begin with. Maybe they knew this was how they could make him behave, make him be one of them and stop being so strange and irritating. But only one person could have told them.

Shiro.

What had he done to Shiro?

“Sh-shiro.” His voice was wrecked and the sobs were evident when he spoke, but he had to speak. They’d never let him out if he didn’t learn his lesson.

“I’m sorry I don’t listen. I’m sorry I’m so difficult. I’m sorry I disobeyed orders on our last mission. I’m sorry I get into so many fights with Lance. I’m sorry it took me a year to find you…”

It went on and on, and it wasn’t until that moment that he realized how truly awful he’d been to Shiro. How he’d ruined everything.

“I’m sorry I ruined your life.”

Nothing. Silence. It wasn’t enough-- He was still being punished. Maybe for nothing, maybe for everything, and all he could do now was let the darkness choke him and beg them for mercy.

* * *

“Has anyone seen Keith?”

Shiro asked the question at dinner, when he and Allura had finally emerged from the bridge with exhausted eyes. Everyone was already at the table, including an oil stained and slightly singed Coran, except for Keith.

“I already checked the training deck and his room.” Shiro continued when none of them answered. “But he wasn’t there.”

Pidge shrugged her shoulders, already digging in to her bowl of goo. “Last time I saw him was this morning when Lance made us play hide and seek.”

Shiro raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “You guys got him to play a game with you?”

“Mostly it was Lance’s badgering.” Said Hunk with a friendly grin. Lance smiled back across the table, but something soured in his gut all the same. Keith usually spent so little time with them that Lance hadn’t noticed his absence, but they hadn’t been able to find him earlier, and if he hadn’t been to the training deck or his room, then where was he?

“He probably found something cool while he was hiding from us and got caught up.”

Shiro didn’t seem appeased by Pidge’s explanation; his frown only seemed to deepen as he stared into his bowl and swirled his spoon through the goo.

“You said while he was hiding. So did you not find him?” He directed the question at Lance, who sucked his bottom lip between his teeth.

“No, we didn't. Apparently I underestimated Mr. Hothead’s stealth skills.”

“I’m sure he’s fine, Shiro.” Allura sighed as she unenthusiastically dug into her own bowl. “Like Pidge said, he must’ve gotten caught up with something.”

“Yeah.” Even that one word seemed reluctant. “But I’d rather if he didn’t miss dinner. Coran, can you do a thermal scan of the Castle or something and see where he is?”

“I surely can, Number Two,” was Coran’s cheerful reply as he produced his tablet from within his coat. Everyone was quiet as the scan ran, Lance fidgeting anxiously in his seat. He couldn’t explain why, but he had the distinct feeling that something was off, and he found himself waiting for the scan with his heart in his throat.

“Ah, here we go. Looks like Number Four is in Supply Closet 82, on the C deck.”

Everyone, including Coran, exchanged puzzled frowns at the information.

“Why would Keith just be hanging out in a supply closet?” Lance asked.

Coran frowned down at his tablet and tapped the screen in a few places. “I’m sure I don’t-- well, that can’t be right.”

“What?” Inquired Shiro with a furrowed brow. He’d put his spoon down and was now giving Coran his full attention. “What is it?”

“This says that the door on the closet is locked.”

For a moment Shiro just sat there, frozen. Then his eyes darkened like thunderstorms.

“Fuck.”

With that he was up and away from the table, leaving everyone else in stunned shock, because Shiro never swore. Ever.

Pidge is the first one to shake off the stupor and follow Shiro out of the room. Lance went next and heard Hunk’s chair scrape as he got up as well.

“Did he get locked in the closet?” Hunk whispered to him anxiously as they followed Shiro through the halls, practically at a run. “Has he been in there _all day_?”

Lance gulped. “I hope not.”

It didn’t take them long to reach the closet in question, and Lance was shaken when he realized that he’d searched this hallway and had been pretty certain Keith wasn’t in it. But apparently he was wrong, because when Shiro hit the touch pad for the correct door it slid open to reveal a figure that flinched from the light, huddled into a ball in a dark corner.

_Oh, Jesus Christ._

“Keith.” Shiro breathed out, already moving forward. Keith didn’t even look up as Shiro took hold of his shoulders and pulled him into a hug; he sat still, and after a moment a croaky sentence made its way out.

“Shiro… I’m sorry.”

His voice is barely there, cracked and wrecked. A sudden image flashed through Lance’s mind of Keith, banging on the locked door and screaming for them, and immediately he felt ill. A quick glance to Hunk and Pidge revealed them with similar guilty, stricken expressions.

“No no no, don’t be sorry, you didn’t do anything wrong. Come on, let’s get you out of here, come on--”

Moving carefully, as though Keith was made of glass, Shiro lifted him to his feet and turned to steer them both out of the fairly tiny closet. The moment he saw the other paladins he went pale and dropped his red-rimmed gaze to the floor, hiding his face behind his hair, and Lance had never seen him that scared of anything and he couldn’t tell if the burning in his throat was bile or guilt.

“I’m sorry!” He blurted out before he could think. Shiro gave him a sharp look, but his mouth was already running and once it started it was hard to stop. “Keith, we didn’t know you got locked in the closet, we thought you’d just come out when you got bored and you’d wander off and do something else, I promise if we knew we wouldn’t have left you there.”

Keith still wouldn’t look at him.

“Not now, Lance.” Said Shiro, firmly but not unkindly. “Just give us a minute.”

* * *

“You weren’t being punished.”

Keith was sitting on the couch next to him, a blanket and Shiro’s arm over his shoulders, but still he wasn’t saying much. He didn’t respond to Shiro’s statement, only rested his head against his knees, and all Shiro could do was hold him closer. It had been awhile since he’d seen Keith this shaken.

“You hear me? You aren’t in trouble, I promise.”

Keith’s breath came out shaky and Shiro suppressed his tired sigh. He’d be mostly fine by tomorrow, he knew. Exhausted and embarrassed and a little quieter than normal, but mostly fine. They just had to get through the hard part.

“It’s alright. Just ride it out.”

  



End file.
